By Stephen Collinson, CNN
Photo: AFP / Saul Loeb
Analysis - President Donald Trump has spent a lifetime talking himself out of tough spots. But in the war with Iran, his trusty technique of sowing confusion to postpone reckonings is beginning to fail.
Ten days in, Trump still hasn't settled on a consistent rationale for why he went to war. Now, he's hinting that peace might soon be at hand - even while he and top aides simultaneously warn the fighting might get more intense and last longer.
The messaging disconnect goes beyond Trump's flood-the-zone rhetoric and odd tendency to commentate on his own actions. It reflects fast-escalating political and military pressures bearing down on a president who gambled his legacy on a war that has spawned a global energy and geopolitical crisis.
Tumbling stock markets and spiking oil prices have raised the possibility that a prolonged conflict could shatter the global economy. Days of Iranian retaliatory drone and missile strikes on Gulf states stoked fears of a wider conflagration.
The political clock is now ticking faster inside the United States, where Trump and his allies fret reverberations will worsen the cost-of-living misery that threatens the GOP's midterm election prospects.
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